Corporate Social Responsibility
ConAgra Foods Foundation’s Nourish to Flourish® Platform – Food and Facts about Food for the Future
With the economy still in recovery mode and talks of tax hikes, fiscal cliffs, and increased food prices, basic needs - food, water and shelter - are no longer a given. According to the U.S. Department of Agriculture, food insecurity, also known as hunger, affects 50 million Americans. This number includes nearly 17 million children who live in households that experience times when there is not enough food in the home to provide for active, healthful lives. When children don’t have consistent access to food, especially nutrient dense food, it can affect brain development, growth, and education performance.
ConAgra Foods is one of North America’s leading food companies, with brands in 97 percent of America’s households, ranging from Banquet®, Chef Boyardee®, and Healthy Choice® to Marie Callender’s®, Orville Redenbacher’s®, Reddi-wip®, and more. In fiscal year 2012, the company had sales of $13 billion and employed more than 25,000 people. ConAgra Foods’ brands have strong presence in grocery, convenience, mass merchandise, and club stores and a strong business-to-business presence, supplying frozen potato and sweet potato products and other vegetable, spice, and grain products to a variety of well-known restaurants, foodservice operators, and commercial customers.
With leading brands in a majority of households and FOODS in its name, ConAgra Foods knows the power of food and the impact it can make in a child’s life. Much of the need related to food is about access to food and access to knowledge about food to make healthful food choices. With this in mind, the ConAgra Foods Foundation launched its Nourish Today, Flourish Tomorrow platform in 2007 to ensure kids have the food and facts they need to flourish in the future.
Nourish Today, Flourish Tomorrow is built on ConAgra Foods Foundation’s nearly 20-year commitment to the cause of child hunger in America. This commitment began with an investment to bring Kids Cafe’s, an after-school feeding program, to a larger scale, opening more than 250 across the country. Today, the focus of the Foundation is to bring solutions to hunger within reach of those in need, spanning from direct service to non-profit capacity building and advocacy efforts to investing in research which helps determine where to focus dollars for the greatest impact.
The Foundation therefore values impact measurement as an important aspect of meeting child hunger needs and measures impact a number of ways, including the LBG measurement model. The model starts with the ultimate goal of ending food insecurity, and records inputs/outputs/ impacts that lead to the accomplishment of that goal.
The logic model is designed as follows:
1. INPUT: The Foundation invests grant dollars in strategic non-profit organizations to help food insecure kids get consistent access to food throughout the summer, especially in areas where food insecurity is above the national average.
2. OUTPUT: Non-profit organizations have the capacity to serve more kids more meals (number of sites, meals, and kids served).
3. IMPACT: Communities have more resources to serve more kids, and in the future can apply learning’s to expand and bring best practices to scale.
This is only the beginning, as the Foundation continues to build its impact and storytelling tools in a more comprehensive way. The commitment to impact measurement now expands beyond the just the Foundation, to include employee engagement through volunteerism and brand engagement through cause marketing. ConAgra Foods recognizes the value of impact measurement in meeting end goals, such as ending food insecurity, and consciously expanded impact measurement efforts from a practice of the Foundation to an effort embraced by functions across the company.
ConAgra Foods Foundation’s Nourish to Flourish® Platform – Food and Facts about Food for the Future
With the economy still in recovery mode and talks of tax hikes, fiscal cliffs, and increased food prices, basic needs - food, water and shelter - are no longer a given. According to the U.S. Department of Agriculture, food insecurity, also known as hunger, affects 50 million Americans. This number includes nearly 17 million children who live in households that experience times when there is not enough food in the home to provide for active, healthful lives. When children don’t have consistent access to food, especially nutrient dense food, it can affect brain development, growth, and education performance.
ConAgra Foods is one of North America’s leading food companies, with brands in 97 percent of America’s households, ranging from Banquet®, Chef Boyardee®, and Healthy Choice® to Marie Callender’s®, Orville Redenbacher’s®, Reddi-wip®, and more. In fiscal year 2012, the company had sales of $13 billion and employed more than 25,000 people. ConAgra Foods’ brands have strong presence in grocery, convenience, mass merchandise, and club stores and a strong business-to-business presence, supplying frozen potato and sweet potato products and other vegetable, spice, and grain products to a variety of well-known restaurants, foodservice operators, and commercial customers.
With leading brands in a majority of households and FOODS in its name, ConAgra Foods knows the power of food and the impact it can make in a child’s life. Much of the need related to food is about access to food and access to knowledge about food to make healthful food choices. With this in mind, the ConAgra Foods Foundation launched its Nourish Today, Flourish Tomorrow platform in 2007 to ensure kids have the food and facts they need to flourish in the future.
Nourish Today, Flourish Tomorrow is built on ConAgra Foods Foundation’s nearly 20-year commitment to the cause of child hunger in America. This commitment began with an investment to bring Kids Cafe’s, an after-school feeding program, to a larger scale, opening more than 250 across the country. Today, the focus of the Foundation is to bring solutions to hunger within reach of those in need, spanning from direct service to non-profit capacity building and advocacy efforts to investing in research which helps determine where to focus dollars for the greatest impact.
The Foundation therefore values impact measurement as an important aspect of meeting child hunger needs and measures impact a number of ways, including the LBG measurement model. The model starts with the ultimate goal of ending food insecurity, and records inputs/outputs/ impacts that lead to the accomplishment of that goal.
The logic model is designed as follows:
1. INPUT: The Foundation invests grant dollars in strategic non-profit organizations to help food insecure kids get consistent access to food throughout the summer, especially in areas where food insecurity is above the national average.
2. OUTPUT: Non-profit organizations have the capacity to serve more kids more meals (number of sites, meals, and kids served).
3. IMPACT: Communities have more resources to serve more kids, and in the future can apply learning’s to expand and bring best practices to scale.
This is only the beginning, as the Foundation continues to build its impact and storytelling tools in a more comprehensive way. The commitment to impact measurement now expands beyond the just the Foundation, to include employee engagement through volunteerism and brand engagement through cause marketing. ConAgra Foods recognizes the value of impact measurement in meeting end goals, such as ending food insecurity, and consciously expanded impact measurement efforts from a practice of the Foundation to an effort embraced by functions across the company.
